How auto-destructive art work got destroyed too soon

When is a bag of rubbish not a bag of rubbish? When it's an integral piece of a high-profile exhibition at one of London's most famous galleries.

Sadly, though, the distinction was lost on a cleaner at Tate Britain who chanced on the bag - part of an installation by Gustav Metzger called Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art - and promptly threw it out.

The organisers of the gallery's Art and the Sixties show admitted yesterday that the bag had been mistaken for rubbish and thrown into a crusher by the cleaner on June 30.

Although the bag was fished out of the Tate's crusher as soon as the mix-up came to light, Metzger is understood to have felt it was beyond rescue.

He was offered compensation, but told Tate staff that the piece was ruined and created a new bag as a replacement. The new rubbish bag is now put in a box overnight for safe keeping. "An artwork by Gustav Metzgerin Tate Britain's Art and the Sixties exhibition is made up of several elements, one of which is a rubbish bag included by the artist as an integral part of the installation," a spokeperson told the London Evening Standard.

"The bag was accidentally removed and damaged but was subsequently replaced. We can't discuss the private arrangements made with artists and financial arrangements relating to artworks."

Metzger, a German artist who lives in east London, invented auto-destructive art in 1959.

According to the artist's account, the form "re-enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummelling to which individuals and masses are subjected."

He once painted hydrochloric acid on to a canvas, so that eventually the painting was entirely eaten away, in what was intended as an attack on those art dealers and collectors who manipulate modern art for profit.